This had been another very quiet year for us on your Committee. As I said last year, we were sorry to lose John as our Secretary and despite significant efforts on everyone's part, we have not been able to find a replacement. So we still do our best with a small Committee comprising Ian our Treasurer, Rosie our main fundraiser (and with Chris, organiser of the Photo Competition), Julia and me. Again, as I said last year, losing another Committee member for whatever reason will seriously affect the future viability of Mid-Sussex MENCAP.
Requests for financial help remain few and far between. Our target remains to use the legacy over 10 years, but this might be difficult given the success of our investments and the lack of requests for help. It is very important, though, that we retain sufficient funds to ensure that at least our two Gateway Clubs can continue to run.
We are still, in the main, making donations to organisations that help and support people with a learning disability rather than making donations to individual people. The amount remaining from the legacy is substantial, but it will run out one day. That will mean the end of our Gateway Clubs and our successful Art and Photo Competitions unless your Committee can find alternative sources of funding or through sponsorship.
We still hold regular meetings on a bi-monthly basis. We continue to embrace modern technology by conducting much of our business through e-mails in between meetings.
We have continued to develop and keep up to date as well as we can our web site it remains one of our main methods of giving information to people about what is happening around Mid-Sussex and further afield. In this year we started to look at having a Facebook page for Gateway.
March marked the first anniversary of our take-over of the management and running of the East Grinstead Gateway Club. This has been a great success allowing the people who were the East Grinstead Society Committee to stand back and take a much needed rest. Thanks to all of them for running the East Grinstead Gateway Club for so long and for keeping it going. Many thanks must also go to Diane, our Club Leader, for the efficient way in which she has managed this significant change. The only downside is that, despite Diane's efforts we are still short of volunteers for the East Grinstead Club.
This year we held our annual Mary Wheeler Art Competition which was again very successful with over 150 entries(slightly down on the previous year), all of a very high quality. Everyone who came along to the prize-giving ceremony enjoyed seeing the pride and feelings of achievement that the winners had when receiving their prizes. I must thank Ross Thompson, our judge, for the hard work that he put in to judging the entries. Sadly Ross has decided to step down after almost 10 years as our judge and we will miss him.
In the year under review we also held our annual Photo and Film Competition, now in its 33rd year. The prize-giving ceremony at the Martlets in Burgess Hill in June was a great success and again it was good to see the pride on people’s faces as they received their prizes. This was the fifth year that the Competition had been organised by Rosie and Chris and they continue to amaze us with the amount of work and energy that they put into making the competition a success. Again we are grateful to our judges.
In the summer we held what is now our annual Summer Party and Disco. Again it was very successful with music from the Burgess Hill Marching Band and Gary and the day was enjoyed by many people. This will definitely be an annual event for us and I am currently organising the 2017 Summer Party.
Finally, I would like to thank all those people who help us on a voluntary basis to make Mid-Sussex MENCAP a success. This includes all my colleagues on the committee as well as Diane and the volunteers at Burgess Hill and East Grinstead Gateway Clubs. I would also like to thank all those who help with our fund-raising activities. I hope that I haven’t missed anyone out – Mid-Sussex MENCAP’s continued success depends on a joint effort.
Peter Evans
Chairman, Mid-Sussex MENCAP
May 2017
FUTURE PLANS
Our plans for 2017/2018 are to:
- Continue to examine and review our Policies to ensure that they remain relevant and conform to legal and insurance requirements and to add to our Policies where necessary
- Generate, and meet, more requests for financial help from our membership, individuals with a learning disability and other people and organisations associated with people with a learning disability in the Mid-Sussex area
- Continue to support the Club Leader and volunteers and to develop and expand all Gateway activities in Mid-Sussex and East Grinstead
- Continue all our efforts at fundraising, both to generate income and to publicise and market our presence in Mid-Sussex and our role in supporting people with a learning disability.
- Run the Photo and Film Competition and the Mary Wheeler Art Competition